This talk explores the sociocultural, historical, and geographic
dimensions of international migration and remittances in Vietnam,
examining in particular the role of transnational gifting in
re-establishing, maintaining, and straining kinship networks disrupted by
war and exile. I argue that the nature of long distance international
gifting exchanges in the global political economy juxtaposes the mobility
of financial remittance flows against the confines of state bound bodies.
In this contradiction is revealed a creative space for emergent social
imaginaries and agencies that disrupt structures and contingencies of
desire and expectation, and where the characteristics of the gifting
medium itself come to affectively frame the relationships between and
aspirations of remittance exchange participants.